[sims] NOVA split lunch

[erbster]

Hi folks.

I have written a couple of timetables in Nova but this year, I want to have a split lunch, ie all year groups same timings up to end of lesson 3, then some year groups go to lunch whilst others have lesson 4, then the situation reverses. The lunch period and the teaching periods are different lengths.

 

Although there is no requirement to register students during their lunch break, SIMS will not "know" whether students are on lunch or in a lesson during the overlap of lunch. Does anyone have experience of this situation and/or is able to offer advice on how to handle this in Nova?

 

Thanks

[CMLG]

We did this in my previous school. We inserted an extra period so early lunch was period 4a and late lunch was period 4b. Then (if I remember correctly) I used Year Blanking Codes to blank out the year that was on lunch. When we exported it to SIMS we had to be creative about the timings of the period as SIMS won't accept the overlapped times.

[FionaS]

Hi there,

 

In Nova you can set a period type of lunch to help with this issue but I'm not 100% sure how this then translates into SIMS, I plan to test it in the near future.

 

Best wishes

[erbster]

Thanks for the replies, folks.

There seem to be two ways- 1) session 4a 4b and 4c (Year 7 have 4a and 4b as a lesson and 4c as lunch, whilst year 11 have 4a as lunch and 4b/4c as lesson, etc) or 2) to make session 4 extra long

 

1. Is more complex but also more accurate

2. Is easier but SIMS will not know which kids are on lunch

[scabrera]

Hi

I have been asked to do this as well but also at Break. How do I make sure that teachers who are teaching get a lunch and don't go from one Key Stage to another so miss out ?

[purplecabbage]

Hi everyone, I'm a long time beneficiary of edugeek and haven't posted before so firstly BIG THANKS! And secondly, please help!

 

I am timetabling for next year and have come up with similar problems to the above. Our timetable has been five periods this year, but next year it will be split at several points - morning break and lunch - so that at two points in the day, younger students are at break whilst older students are in a lesson (and then vice versa). I can build and schedule blocks but can't make the timetable see that one of the potential break periods needs to be automatically protected. The only ways around I can see are

 

(i) To create a seven period day and use blanking codes for the break. In 'Cycle', assign two of the morning periods as potential breaks and two as potential lunches, and then manually timetable in staff breaks - but this would require me to input their breaks whilst scheduling blocks which would be very inflexible and prevent blocks being moved easily.

(ii) To create a five period day - but this then doesn't recognise when double lessons are permissible (they're at different times for the younger students to the older ones).

 

Any help would be enormously gratefully received!

[JuliaS]

Which one did you do? I ha e the same issue now and the 4a,b and c looks interesting. Did you timetable for example 7-9 lunch for 4a and then lesson 4b and c and then KS4 lesson 4a and b then lunch 4c?

[purplecabbage]

I thought I'd send a belated reply to say that what I've done over the last few years (since originally posting this) is to build a five period day first, and then add in split periods once the essentials are all confirmed. In terms of JuliaS's question, I can then timetable lower school lunch as 4a and upper school lunch as 4b; upper school have lessons during 4a and lower school have lessons during 4b.

[bobsmith]

In Facility Scheduler this was really easy - In Nova-T6 I just gave up. SIMS fundamentally doesn't do anything clever with timetables. One of the absolute biggest weaknesses - as it's really not theoretically complicated.

 

I used to run 3 different day structures overlapping each other and it just worked perfectly - because in Facility you would actually use the real times of day in your period start and finish times - you could even mix and match the structures for both students and staff.

So KS3, KS4 and KS5 could have a different school day without issue.